Tour of Solo Woman Living in a Sprinter Van

here we are in joni's beautiful van we're going to step inside and take a look around okay man it is so nice that you're your tiny house builder did an amazing job thanks let's go ahead and show us around all right well starting up here in front i've got um i've got a lounge area so one of the things that i really wanted with this van was i wanted it to feel really open and i didn't want any floor to ceiling anything because that just feels it just closes everything in and boxes it in and so i went with a really really open design and so i've got the swivel seats in the front with a bench and and the bench is not only my file drawers for work but also a hidden toilet oh look at that that was always my next question how do you go to the bathroom yeah and so i'll actually unbox that for you so you can see exactly how okay all right because it works really well i am you know as fancy as this van is i use a bucket system because it works it's easy and it just works so um so you want to yeah see that well yeah we can't have a fan tour without seeing your toilet exactly that's totally impossible um so this is just a meditation mat that i already had and this is just to keep it from falling on the floor as i drive so this just lifts off and it steps in front of the toilet for a squatty potty oh yeah this is a normal toilet seat so just one of the not an elongated one just a regular toilet seat and it's on top of a an oval wash bucket oh yeah just uh you'd buy that in a grocery store yep and i use bag these bags from ikea fit it absolutely perfectly and then i use um and this is cleaned right now and then i just used a shredded paper pet bedding this is a recycled product and this just sits on a frame so that the seat can sit above it so it's super comfortable it's exactly the same height as a as your toilet in your house yeah that's a squatty potty which raises your uh knees so that it's a more natural position exactly so this is only for poo so i use uh p bottles for pee right turn that around right let me put this back together and i'll show you because i am not a squatter so here's my p system so i've got a plastic water bottle green pretty much camouflages the camouflage is the piece so that uh so they can just take it into any bathroom and dump it when i'm in a area that has that i use a p rag and a p style okay so that's designed specifically for women yeah and their and their anatomy exactly so it helps me pee in the bottle without making a mess anywhere so this is kind of my whole little bathroom thing with my toilet paper down in here and my bottles and my pet bedding right right right just standard pet bedding from uh anywhere yep um you can get them at uh any of the pet stores or oh sorry rattling that you can get it at a pet store or a tax store farm store that sort of thing it's for hamsters and small animals right okay so nice lounge you can have company over and they can have a seat yeah and your bathroom is hidden your toilet is completely yeah i i often have people sitting on the toilet unaware okay oh yeah yeah and like you said your fronts uh seats swivel that that isn't standard with a sprinter so he had to put that in um i ordered that from the factory oh you did okay yeah so that is from sprinter you can get them after market as well but they're higher if you get them after market well i guess we never even talked about your van your van is actually a freightliner branded yes but made by mercedes exactly so it's made by mercedes and mercedes partners with freightliner here in the us to to offer the vans and i did that specifically i i just feel like there are people in the world who see mercedes and they think lots of money and when you see freightliner you just don't have much of an opinion unless you're a truck driver and then you still don't really have much of an opinion of it um so i made i was intentional on the branding of it and i also took off all the badging so it doesn't say sprinter on the back i have a couple of bumper stickers on the back that i have as magnets and so i can pull those off and i can be totally inco incognito anywhere it started life as a car empty cargo van yes that's all it was yeah you insulated it yes uh did the everyday all the design that we see and hired this tiny house builder to build exactly yep so it's insulated with thinsulate on the walls and ceiling and mini cell foam on the floor and then um my goals for this van were to have a comfortable bed and a good kitchen and be as green as possible and be able to park anywhere along the oregon coast and so it has met all of those all it's ticks all those boxes i've used as much of the green products as i can i have a natural linoleum floor i've got a recycled paper stone counter i've got all of the finish is is a linseed oil finish and i've got like organic bedding and all of that so um so i've got a really great kitchen set up um starting at the door i have a marine fridge that is very full right now it has a freezer this is a totally unique fridge and it has a drawer just below the freezer that doesn't freeze it just boggles my mind right so i love the fridge it works great and it hardly uses any energy i am 100 electricity so i'm all solar i never plug in and so i i don't have propane on board or anything like that i cook with an induction burner that just stores under the counter and just plugs in so i have probably more counter space than most people in a house i would say so yeah and certainly most people in an rv yeah that's a that's an enormous counter then yeah so the other way that i cook is with an instant pot and on my channel the gala van you can see a lot of instant pot recipes and so this is just a really solar friendly way to cook because it only takes energy for for a very short amount of time it takes four to five percent of my battery bank to cook a whole super stew and is that because it's well insulated and then once it starts once it gets up the heat it maintains it well well it's just because it's a pressure cooker and so once it gets up to pressure it's not taking in any energy right it just has to maintain the pressure yeah exactly so it's a great way to cook easy easy way to cook on the road because it's just one pot meals kind of thing and it kind of takes away some people are afraid of pressure cookers so imagine it takes away some of that it does so i have had a stovetop pressure cooker and yeah you have to babysit those yes you put it in you push the button and you're done and you just wait for your food to cook it's super easy and everything tastes great out of it so i do have a 40 gallon water tank and i drink all of my water from my water tank but i filter it through berkey water filter so that just makes it super easy i don't have to be hunting for for great water all the time also my sink um it was important to me to have a sink big enough to wash my dishes and to wash my hair and um so this is a bar sink that you can get at home depot or amazon so you mentioned washing your hair uh and how do you shower then so i do have a shower off the back but i've only used it three times the weather has to be absolutely perfect for me to use that i generally just use a corner of a washcloth each day with a tiny bit of water and a little bit of soap and i bathe with that i bathe my body with that and then every i don't know four or five days i wash my hair just in the sink and this pulls out it's great do that again show that how that works yeah that works really good yeah so it makes it super easy and um i can make it so that the water i rarely turn this on very high i usually only turn it on that much and that does everything that i need it to washing dishes rinsing dishes washing my hair so we heard the water pump kick in you just have a traditional rv water system i do that's probably the thing that's going to fail the first right on my van um because it's pretty much the only thing from the rv industry right so i've got marine latches these are slam latches that so i never have to worry about my drawers flying open as i drive because as soon as i push them in they're locked i did so this van has been extremely planned so my the drawer sizes are based on what i needed to store in them so i already knew what i was going to be bringing and was able to design it based on what i needed and then this is something that i've never seen anybody else do and there's probably a better way to do it but i needed a step up to the bed and so this is just a piece of the countertop and the there's a ledge that has notches oh yeah in between the drawers for the step up to the bed it also makes for an extra seat oh yeah that's very slick yeah it's great i love it um super simple i would love to figure out a way to have it pull out from behind the drawers or you know maybe to on both sides but i haven't quite figured out the logistics of that um and then i was able to put a closet under my bed and have spillover pantry and then my batteries are also under my bed um there's a wooden box back in there the other way and your it's your clothes your clothes closet yep my clothes kind of everything and my food pantry yep and my shoes um and then up above this is basically my dresser um and bookshelves and everything i love this open design yes it gives you you're not really supposed to walk around your van while it's in motion but when you do have an extra driver sometimes you do that you go back and close the window or something it gives you a handhold um and nothing ever falls out of it except for one towel so everything has a home and that one towel is always there and falls out the one towel it has its home it just doesn't stay it likes to likes to bump out um but yeah everything has a home and i think as you're planning out your van i mean you don't have to use this these materials you can still have a van that that lives like this van with um without the expense of this van but what i would recommend is that you have everything have a home and have it in its place all the time because it just makes it so much easier um i am so nimble i i can move within five minutes no matter how you know even if i haven't done my dishes i can move in five minutes and almost always i can just move right away like just grab my key and go yeah i can see that everything with everything in a place you can always find it you don't have to drag it out when you set up camp and put it away when you when you leave camp yeah yeah and i i think i can find anything in my van in the dark wow that'd be nice everything has its place right yeah right it's it's a great it's such an easy way to live yeah close by you don't have to go very far for anything and it's all there exactly exactly i love that too all right so that's a really big bed that's a big bed it is a queen it's a normal queen-size bed and with with room on the sides to be able to tuck in and stuff um when i first designed the the van i had a partner and um for a while i was i was like wow i really didn't need this big of a van and didn't need this big of a bed but now i have a partner again and i'm very happy that i have a queen size bed again right so and the comfortable bed was my number one priority sure this van and so it was really important to me i mean this is a nine inch organic latex mattress it's kind of crazy it's it's heavy very very heavy um but it's comfortable and that was number one priority right right you're gonna stick my nose down in your uh your closet just everything that a norm you know you have in a house you have a spot for it here and for lots of drawers beautiful drawers over here each holding normal household stuff and a big beautiful bed and a guitar see a guitar hanging up here that's a new addition all righty so why don't we go ahead and um check out the back yeah well now that's some great organization organization and storage back here as well yeah so um so these boxes are um really to prevent my pillow from falling into my garage right that was uh kind of an afterthought but it also provides storage for my screen that i put on the back here's my outdoor shower it's a lot different than most people's i used a european style shower mixer valve and i just have a shower head that stores here in with my fresh water hose and my shower curtains and it just has a suction cup that goes onto the window so this is a drawer just for cards and hoses and wet things um just to make it really handy i do have a 15 gallon gray tank that i have to empty and i have a 40 gallon fresh water tank and that's just a simple gravity feed fill and so the gray water tank is just for the shower no the shower doesn't always think at all right exactly and uh and it doesn't it takes me quite a while to fill up 15 gallons because i use very little water even though i don't use any disposables i'm always washing my dishes and things um it still just doesn't take very much to do that if you're very careful which i am i also have a folding bike um so if you want to buy i i love not having anything on the outside of my van and so i've got my bike and my ladder able to store inside so we're back inside and you did a stunning stunning job of doing the layout i mean it's just it's nearly perfect i think and your carpenter your tiny house builder was a true craftsman boys you know sometimes people pay a lot of money and don't happy with what they get but i assume that you're delighted with what you got i love it yeah it's it's amazing craftsmanship here so this is a hard question but do you mind if i ask how much to have you got invested so you know this is you know i did plan for this and i i did put some money into this but you can do the same sort of build and have the same sort of layout and stuff with a lot less expensive materials i will say that it is far less than purchasing a pre-made road track or the like and you get exactly what you want you get higher quality materials and you don't have the extra things that you're not going to use like i did not want a microwave i didn't want a black tank i didn't want an indoor shower all of those things would have taken space that would have decreased my quality of life so it is you know this is definitely a higher end build but it is far less than a pre-made build and um and you can do this same sort of thing for a lot less right even if you're not a craftsman yeah you might you probably aren't going to end up with the same craftsman quality unless you are a craftsman exactly but you can have an amazingly comfortable home for pretty little money too exactly so uh before we go why don't you give us your social media again great i am at the galavan that's t-h-e-g-a-l-a-v-a-n that's on youtube instagram and facebook and so everyone go check her out a lot of great ideas and i think you'll really really enjoy it yeah oh i also have the galavan.com which is where you can find all of your specific questions about what exactly i used in here with links so if that's something if you're trying to build something and you want to know what this countertop is or what kind of sink this is that information's at thegallivant.com anything we haven't talked about joni that you want to throw in not that i can think of i think we've covered so much bob i i really appreciate the the tour and and the work that you do to help people get on the road yeah thank you i appreciate that okay folks there you go i think you're really going to enjoy this beautiful van build and get some great ideas for yourself thank you so much joey really appreciate it so everyone out there i know you got something out of this and so hit that subscribe button hit that thumbs up button and we'll talk to you later [Music] [Music]

Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 107,200

Keywords: live, living, car, van, RV, Full-time, nomad, gypsy, camper, camp, boondock, travel, snowbird, caravan, tiny, house, tribe, RTR, adventure

Id: l7eRzmsevWA

Length: 20min 24sec (1224 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 10 2020